Mildern
by Novocain
Summary: [The moonshine grows as what little Remus there is dilutes like iced tea left in the sun.] We are hollow men, and all that's left of him is the wolf and the moonshine. Requestfic for hpfan23.


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We are hollow men.

Lupin has been a werewolf since the age of five. He is not human, and he is not an animal.

He is Dark.

He is hollow and filled with moonshine.

James and Sirius always get so angry when people react to the mention of werewolves with words like _**beasts**_ and _**evil**_ and _**murderous**_ and _**Dark c**__**reatures**_. James hisses, "Prejudiced gits!" and Sirius snarls, "_They're_ the beasts!"

Remus says nothing, though, because Lupin _is_ a Dark creature and a beast. Lupin gets murderous urges that he has to force back - he has to cage the moonshine constantly, every single second of every single day, and that more than the transformations is what is making him go prematurely grey.

The moonshine still glows out from his amber eyes. Nothing can help that. He is grey and gold, moonlight on the water.

We are hollow men.

He is hollow and filled with moonshine, and the loss of his friends (pack) nearly destroys his mind.

It doesn't, though. The moonshine becomes more concentrated and difficult to contain, perhaps, but not noticeably.

This is a lie.

Part of the reason that Lupin leaves the magical world for the muggle is to get away from all the aggressive, provocative magic and brainless people celebrating the Dark Lord's defeat.

_Celebrating his pack's death._

He very nearly tears the throats out of a few drunken revelers - _while in human form_. That is when he leaves - leavesleavesleaves, and, no, he doesn't look back.

We are hollow men.

The moonshine grows as what little Remus there is dilutes like iced tea left in the sun. He loses a little bit more of himself every time he sees their grinning faces playing pranks in their sterling silver frames. One lonely night a few months into his self-imposed exile, he stumbles drunkenly around his secluded cottage and quietly tips every single picture over.

No, he doesn't look at them again. They stay face-down on the tables, the velvet backings of the frames catching dust quickly and speeding up time.

He does it to try to keep Remus inside himself, but he loses him anyway. He tries for a decade to let go, and it all turns to moonshine (intangible nothingness) the instant he sees Harry on the train.

We are hollow men.

Lupin can feel the last of Remus being scooped out of him, leaving wispy moonshine to fill in the spaces.

_Who can live on nothing but moonshine?_ titters the tipsy socialite. _A werewolf can_, he silently answers. Lupin fears losing control, and that shall be so much easier without the good-hearted teenager Remus was.

He didn't want to lose what was left of him - didn't want to be left with only the beast.

It is so late, toolate. Harry is the catalyst, and Sirius is toolate toolate.

Too late.

We are hollow men.

He is hollow and filled with moonshine, and Sirius's death is toolate for Lupin to feel anything over. He has lost Remus, you see, and it takes a little moonshine to even pretend that he still cares. He stays with the Order and fights because it is better than living out the next century on nothing but moonshine, constantly straining not to kill everyone with a smile on his face.

No one can call it boring, and Snape's potion gives Lupin more control.

It is control he desperately needs. He thinks on Snape when staring into his steaming goblet of Wolfsbane Potion, and he considers (with a wolf's mind, the mind of someone scanning prey for weakness and disease) that Snape is slightly in love with death. He has seen Lupin as a wolf twice, yet still needles him.

Lupin considers that he himself is slightly in love with death as well.

We are hollow men.

Tonks is not hollow. She is different like Lupin - but in reverse. She gathers so much humanity inside of her that it explodes outwardly, smoothing and dissolving into myriad different features.

Her human infatuation with Lupin is somewhat puzzling to him.

He is not human. _Not_, and only a Gryffindor would think he is. He is as different as a centaur from humans, and Lupin cannot understand Tonks's flirting without Remus to explain it to him.

But Remus is gone, scooped out for three years now. No hint of him is left, only a vague facade.

No one will notice, Lupin knows. He has no one who knows him well enough to notice - they're all dead and rotting.

We are hollow men.

He decides to let her attempt to prove herself worthy of being his mate. She persists for a year - she is stubborn. She gets so depressed over his refusals that she loses her magic - she is loyal. She is an Auror - she is strong.

The day he allows her into his bed is the day he really claims her as his mate. He dominates her the entire night – something she wasn't quite expecting from reserved, tired Remus - and plays delicious games where she runs and he hunts her down.

Lupin enjoys his mate, but he gets a tad restless after a while. His chance to stir things up a bit comes when Tonks tells him she is pregnant. He is overjoyed to have a cub, of course, but where's the fun in letting everyone know that?

The wolf is a sneaky one, full of pranks and tricks that can entertain or kill. So he runs to Harry (another test - this time a test of the boy's qualities, a test to see if the seventeen year old is Slytherin enough to kill Voldemort) and is turned away.

The boy isn't Slytherin enough, but Lupin thinks that the little Gryffindor might just pull it off.

Lupin decides to name Harry his cub's protector. Who better to take care of an orphan than a fellow orphan?

And he is eventually proud that he does, because he can smell his own death approaching. He finds himself to be afraid...afraid of losing the last bit of himself, the last drop of moonshine.

He grins an ironic, wolfish grin in the privacy of the Tonks' backyard at the thought. He has turned into an alcoholic - he is addicted to life and his mate and his cub and the moonshine. He stares silently at the sickle moon and doesn't stop when a cloud covers it like a lover. He stares stares stares and he doesn't sing.

He is slightly in love with death, but even he is smart enough to fear it.

He returns to the warm, cozy house a few minutes/hours later, and he lets the fear flow through him and evaporate. Gone gone gone, because he isn't a lone wolf any more. He has another pack now, and it is his job to die for them this time – because Remus really had been a chivalrous, self-sacrificing Gryffindor and Lupin misses him. He lets his pack flow through him and float away, as well. He lets go and Lord/Lady Death has such a dark smile - so inviting.

_'Just a little longer, my liege.'_

He doesn't really think he could survive his pack dying on him again, anyway. When all that you are is moonshine and even that is drained dry when drowning your sorrows, what's left? What more can you lose?

We are hollow men.

And suddenly it's the final battle - they need him at Hogwarts, and he goes, thinking all the while that there was never enough/always too much time (and he wasted it - why did he waste so much?).

The smell of death is overpowering and inviting and absolutely fascinating, but he snarls as he casts his spells and growls when the bright, deadly (like snakes) flashes of light come too close to his mate. (And, Merlin, he hates that she's here, but his deadly mate is _stubborn_ and _loyal_ and _strong_, and even his tricks don't work on her.)

We are hollow men, and his nose has been so prettily distracted by the scent of his own end that he never catches a whiff of his lover's until toolate toolate.

Death smiles at them, and we are hollow men.

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A/N: My lovely friend hpfan23 requested this ages ago - and here it is! Thanks for being so understanding, babe. Right, I need to sleep now. I pulled an all-nighter last night... And I've dozed off five times while trying to post this; I'm not even caring about any mistakes I didn't catch. You people! Point them out so I can fix them. 

Right, title translation competition. Correctly guess the meaning and language of the title and you win a lovely one-shot of your choice to be written by me. Yippee-fucking-skippy. Nighty-night.


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